Among the recent surge of books specifically dedicated to the relationship between sport and religion, Sport and Christianity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (2013) is a new and exciting contribution in the library. The text is another important publication from Routledge’s Research in Sport, Culture and Society series, and its editors Nick J. Watson and Andrew Parker have compiled 10 essays that offer historical and contemporary perspectives on the relationship between religion/ethics/Christianity and sports. The 10 chapters span topics from St. Pauls oft cited athletic metaphor to valued centred discussions of modern sporting technologies. In collecting these essays, Watson and Parker have organised some of the most prolific British and American authors who examine the historical, social and cultural contexts of sport, ethics and religion (specifically Christianity). This book successfully brings together historical and contemporary sport and religious conversations, a task that has been missing from the field and offers its readers important insights into the history and current standing of the relationship of sport and religion.
Although the chapters are well written, the content is certainly targeted for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academic researchers in social, cultural and religious fields of sport study. Its 10 chapters are organised into two sections: five chapters dealing with historical perspectives on sport and Christianity, and five chapters examining contemporary perspectives of sport, religion, ethics and Christianity. In this review, I provide a brief overview of each chapter and offer comments on how each meets the main purpose of the book.
It is befitting that Watson and Parker offer Chapter 1 as a most extensive review of literature in these areas. The editors identify, critically appraise and synthesise articles, texts and sources examining sport and Christianity’s relationship in an organised and easily readable manner. In my estimation, they have left no stone unturned in this thorough literature review. This chapter highlights resources for interested scholars, such as web sites, organisations and centres where this work is ongoing, and offers suggestions of areas where the relationship may be examined for future scholars. Consistent with the aim of the book, Watson and Parker bring together the historical and contemporary examination of sport and religion, placing authors across decades into conversation with each other as they highlight the core scholarly material of the field. This chapter highlights emerging areas of research, noting the lack of empirical research in the field, and suggests that future scholars use the theoretical and philosophical information provided by the book to aid in gathering data. To note the thoroughness of this chapter, the authors provide a reference table identifying the key research centres and study groups, important academic books and journals, academic courses, major church-based sport initiatives, sport ministry and sport chaplaincy organisations, conferences, seminars and lectures about sport and Christianity, and finally a list of sport–Christian films.
Chapter 2, by Victor C. Pfitzner, offers a criticism of the Pauline athletic metaphors as he examines the most often cited biblical reference of the sport/Christian relationship; ‘St. Paul’s image of the athlete who trains with rigorous self-discipline, runs to finishing line with total concentration, boxes with well-aimed blows, endures pain to win the contest and finally receives the victor’s crown’ (p. 89). Pfitzner complicates this image and challenges the prolific use of St. Paul as an athlete ideal for modern Christians. While Pfitzner states that these biblical sporting metaphors are not applicable today, St. Paul’s use of sport and competition can be helpful in understanding ancient athletic ideals and modern Olympic values. Throughout the chapter, Pfitzner supports his criticism of modern adoptions of St. Paul with historical and cultural evidence to great effect. Readers of this chapter will come to see that it was St. Paul’s savvy use of his own cultural knowledge of sport to explain Christ to his contemporaries. Many parallels of this can be seen today as we often look to sport to help explain Christian theological positions. Ultimately, Pfitzner claims that St. Paul used athletic metaphors because he understood how important athletics was in the lives of those he wished to convert. Reflecting his own cultural knowledge and cultural position as a philosophical writer, Pfitzner does a superb job in offering a warning and criticism of modern Christian’s uses of sport motifs.
In Chapter 3, Hugh McLeod brings sport and Christianity into a more recent conversation, albeit ca. 1790–1914. Focused on the relationship sport had with religion in England during this time, McLeod suggests that by the end of the nineteenth century in England, ‘sport had become part of the package of British practices and values’ (p. 112) spreading the globe through imperialism. McLeod outlines the relationship sport and recreation had with the Anglican Church prior to the pivotal muscular Christian movement. He discusses the tensions and open hostility the church had with sport and the many popular leisure activities of the time. This tension changed, states McLeod, with popular social movements in the mid-nineteenth century, namely muscular Christianity. Including notions of moral strength, nationalism and morality, muscular Christianity effectively allowed the church to perceive and promote sport and leisure activities as Christian. McLeod highlights the influential role muscular Christianity had within British public education and the global impact this had on the wider culture even as he explains the tensions caused by muscular Christianity among clergy and headmasters alike.
Shirl Hoffman visits a popular topic within the historical relationship of sport and Christianity in Chapter 4, detailing the relationship of evangelical Christians and sport acceptance. Hoffman focuses his chapter on the manner in which sport was ‘used’ by Christian evangelists to make sport an activity of moral and cultural education. The examples provided by Hoffman demonstrate how sport became a redemptive activity for social sins in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Unfortunately, according to Hoffman, their efforts had no lasting effect on modern sport. He states ‘throughout its entire relationship with sport there is no indication that the Christian community ever mounted a serious attempt to influence the form and function of popular sport…’ (p. 147). This chapter does highlight efforts made to bring sport into the service of Christianity and that while sport is not in the direct service of evangelicals, it has, at times, been used effectively for harvesting souls in the stadium.
Chapter 5 brings the historical focus of the text to a close with an interesting essay by Robert Higgs discussing Greek themes of stereotypes and archetypes, common in both sport and religion. His nuanced revelations lead readers into a conversation of contemporary Western sporting fanaticism using Christian metaphors. He states that this chapter examines these ancient and modern themes, yet I found that his ‘exploratory’ effort revealed more questions than answers (which was perhaps his aim). Seeking to define stereotypes and archetypes, Higgs provides examples of religious ‘patterns’ that involve Greek ideals and quests for excellence, slowly including sport and the ‘physical’ into his conversation. Higgs then brings stereotypical and archetypical patterns into conversation with modern sport. He highlights how American sports figures (athletes) are sold in popular media through a continued reliance on ancient Greek motifs, perpetuating lasting reflections of human archetypes. His discussion critiques the perpetual blending of religious themes (Christian) into Western sport fandom, evidenced by a poem he includes (in full) titled Ballad of the Jesus Car. While I feel this chapter lacks a clear focus, drawing the reader towards a historical understanding of sport and Christianity, it does provide a liminal exegesis on the lingering influence ancient Greek motifs continue to have in sport fanaticism today.
The sixth chapter of the text, and the first essay focused on contemporary issues of sport and Christianity, is by Nick Watson. This chapter’s focus immediately reveals that how we think about and view modern sport can be analysed from a Christian perspective. Watson focuses his essay on the populations we least think of when discussing modern sport, athletes with intellectual and physical disabilities. Watson examines the secular ‘cult of normalcy’ associated with modern sport, drawing a distinction between the motives of able-bodied athletes and those with intellectual and physical disabilities. Through a Christian perspective, Watson claims that the motivating factors of athletes with disabilities (especially intellectual, i.e. individuals with any significant limitation in intellectual functioning and behaviours) reveal a ‘Prophetic Sign’ that is absent in popular, able-bodied, normal sport activities. After examining the theologies of disability literature, Watson reveals that disabled athletes provide glimpses through their athletic motivations and sporting participation examples of who Christ called the ‘least’. Watson argues, perhaps simplistically, but certainly convincingly, that intellectually disabled athletes are not motivated to play for money, fame or to win-at-all-costs, but rather compete in the purest sense of the term, for fun, enjoyment and sociability. The essay suggests that athletes with intellectual disabilities offer the modern sport landscape a vulnerable and Christ-like example directly opposed to an arguably corrupted able body normal. Watson’s chapter concludes with a familiar criticism of modern sports’ sinful win-at-all-cost mentality and provides evidence of how a Christian perspective can counter the sinful mentality of sport today. Watson’s chapter is an excellent essay to start the reader thinking about the value of examining contemporary sport experiences through a Christian lens.
Tracy Trothen offers in Chapter 7 a fascinating conversation on a highly relevant issue in contemporary sport: the ethics of technological enhancements to sport performance. Trothen uses a postmodern feminist perspective to examine concepts of equality, sameness vs. otherness and relational transcendence as she explores the ethical use of technology to enhance sport performance. This chapter argues ‘that epistemological categorizations that inform (and are informed) normative values have shaped approaches to enhancement questions in sport’ (p. 207). Focused on how useful examining the language of conversations about altering human physical abilities, Trothen combines notions of sport as religion and techno-science enhancements to foster new understandings of ‘other’ bodied athletes. This chapter blends conversations of technology, disability, sport and religion into a nuanced and informative postmodern feminist perspective, without straying from the Christian focus of the text.
Chapter 8 is Jacob Goodson’s essay examining themes of technology and equality in contemporary sport, only this time by discussing steroid use in American baseball. Goodson’s chapter suggests that if sport were guided by a virtue centred approach, there may be some value to allow performance enhancing substances in professional sports. Goodson’s chapter, relying heavily on the scholarship of Alasdair MacIntyre, wrestles with the arguments made for and against the use of steroids in the game of baseball. Baseball, like any major professional sport, has a history and Goodson, at times, seems to assume that baseballs history was untarnished until steroids entered the game. For example, Goodson’s chapter suggests that there was a time in baseball where themes of magnanimity, friendship and teamwork dictated the moral decisions of the players, and that steroids were injected (forgive the term) disrupting the serenity. Beyond this, the chapter provides an interesting perspective on baseball, its history and the use of steroids in the modern era, which Goodson states was the result of players striving ‘for the sake of excellence within the game itself’ (p. 237). The reader is exposed to an extensive argument highlighting the ethical costs and benefits of steroid use in baseball, and ultimately a morally justified argument against performance enhancing substances for the sake of the sport. Goodson provides interesting insights as to why athletes rationalise the use of steroids to enhance performance while arguing against such claims from a ‘purity of the sport’ position (which some may read to be a slippery argument).
Kevin Lixey examines the modern relationship between sport and Christianity from the Vatican’s perspective in Chapter 9. Relying on the assumption that sport provides benefits for all, which he claims the modern Catholic Church emphasises, Lixey concludes that the Vatican is attempting to recuperate and bolster sports’ ‘recreational, educational, and pastoral dimensions’ (p. 266). His essay discusses Catholic Church’s emphasis on these dimensions through careful awareness of how sports can be done within a Christian context. Lixey’s chapter promotes his belief that the Vaticans can ‘contribute to the love of life by freeing young people from the snares of apathy and indifference’ through sports ‘that can teach sacrifice, respect, and responsibility’ (p. 251). He also discusses to a lesser degree, ‘the importance of the educator’s role in sporting activities’ (p. 251). Relying on familiar themes of healthy competition play as an antidote for apathy, and sports’ asceticism Lixey brings the actions of Vatican leaders (specifically John Paul II and Benedict XVI) and programmes to the reader’s attention. In my view, his conclusions do not address the serious task the Catholic Church has in dealing with the corruption of major professional sport organisations, some of whom the Vatican is now directly aligned, but this could easily emerge in follow-up essays or classroom discussions from the material he presents in the chapter.
Watson and Parker’s book concludes with a bright insightful chapter by Scott Kretchmar discussing, but not ultimately arguing for, the compatibility of spiritual humility in sport. Many readers of this review may already know Kretchmar as an insightful and important voice in philosophical discussions of sport. Here, he elaborates on the seeming incompatibility of humility (which he defines through Christian, Islamic and Zen Buddhist understandings) and modern sport experiences at all levels of competition (youth to professional). While Kretchmar is apt to point out where modern sport fails in developing humility (mostly from its very essence and purpose), he does conclude that if we understand sport from ‘a paradoxical, nondualistic vision’, a ‘secular~spiritual humility’ (p. 270) may be realised. Without spoiling the journey that Kretchmar takes the reader on, he never once gives away the belief that sport can provide a certain type of humility, just one that is ‘messy’ and ‘complicated’ (p. 282). His ultimate conclusions deliver the reader to a deeper understanding of humility and how modern western sport is neither a pedagogy for pride nor humility, but for both pride and humility. I leave the nuances of his argument for the reader to discover.
Taken in its entirety, the text is an excellent addition to the growing scholarly work on religion, ethics and Christianity within the modern sport landscape. The real strength of this book is the combined focus of historical and contemporary perspectives, which are both critical and thought provoking as the field of religious sport studies continues to grow and develop. In bringing these two perspectives together into one text, Watson and Parker have added to the growing rich tapestry of Routledge’s Research in Sport, Culture and Society series. Consistent with the purpose of this book, each chapter focuses effectively on the relationship sport has with religious/ethical/Christian perspectives, providing a truly diverse expression of how sport can be viewed theologically.
Health, Human Performance and Recreation Department, Baylor University, Waco
Texas 76798, USA
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© 2014, Andrew R. Meyer
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2014.951677